This is a fantastic dark ambient album from Pyewacket (one of the creative musical outlets for Dan Dolby). There are spirits and hauntings and general creepiness all over this thing. It’s available on Bandcamp through either the Dittany of Crete netlabel page or directly on the Pyewacket page. The inspiration for the music on this album is the Annison Funeral Parlour in Hull, which the liner notes indicate “is widely considered the most haunted building in Yorkshire.” The song titles are all named after areas of the building except for the last track “Mary Jane Langley,” named for the victim of an unsolved murder who was last seen alive at the Annison building. So, overall, happy stuff. (You can read a brief history of the building at this link.)
Give the music a listen and you’ll hear menacing drones, sometimes gloomy and somewhat scattered like on the otherworldly “The Parlour Vigil” and sometimes slowly building a thickened tension, as on “Mortuary.” And don’t miss what sounds like a really nice (haunting) chorus of spirits in the “Embalming Room.” It all creates a great eerie atmosphere.
And if you like it (which you WILL, I say, as I cast my spell) and wish you could hear more music in this vein, Pyewacket has you covered with a number of other albums inspired by historical horror and mystery. The project is even named after one of the alleged familiars of an accused witch from the 1600’s.
Honestly, this album sent me down several rabbit holes, including looking into the inspiration for the Dittany of Crete netlabel name. It turns out, Dittany of Crete is a Mediterranean herb used in various magickal ways. In some places, it is an herb used to get another person to fall in love with you. I can’t help wondering if some of this herb magick was used by Pyewacket with the release of this album, because I’ve completely fallen for it.
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Oh look, here’s something I wrote last year about some other Dan Dolby music.